Advertising in video, such as a television (TV) program, is primarily accomplished by either placing a conventional advertisement in commercial breaks during the display of the TV program (which is an explicit means of advertising) or, by placing a product in the scenes of the video in which the product appears as “naturally” part of the scene, and is not being explicitly advertised (this form of advertising is known as “implicit advertising”). As advertising becomes more cluttered on TV and on the Internet, and with the increasing ability of video viewers (i.e. intended consumers of the advertisers) to avoid such advertising using digital video recorders (DVRs) and other means, the demand for implicit advertising continues to grow.
The market for implicit advertising has been valued at over $4 billion in 2005, and has been growing at over 20% per year. Today, product placements appear in TV shows, films, video games, and new media such as the online virtual world known as Second Life.
Typically, products placed in videos as implicit advertising are placed when the video is filmed or made. Another method adds a flash movie layer to a streaming video format to provide interactivity to the video, thereby allowing users to scroll over or click on elements within the video to obtain more information. Once the video is released for viewing, there lacks a means to identify, locate, replace, supplement or otherwise alter the original product placed in the streaming video.
With the prevalence of videos (particularly those posted on the web via sites such as YouTube®), it is considered desirable and useful to be able to manipulate digital images after creation/production. There are various reasons for this. Realistic content modification can change a scene context, offer product placement, offer advertising and adapt content aesthetics based on user preferences.
Specifically with regard to digital product placement, there is a huge demand for replacement of products or insertion de novo of products into appropriate scenes. Since the inception of TiVo in 1997, digital video recorders (DVRs) have quickly become a staple in many households. One significant reason consumers prefer this technology is because it gives them the ability to skip commercials that appeared in a show's original broadcast. Complementing this trend, viewers can now watch many of their favorite television shows online or, in the alternative, download commercial-free episodes onto their computers or portable media players (e.g., iPods® or even cell phones) for a small charge.1 This mode of viewing shows no signs of slowing. 1 See, for example Apple-iTunes, http:/lwww.apple.com/itunes/store/tvshowshtml (providing instructions on how to download TV shows onto iTunes, for viewing on a computer, or uploading onto a portable media device such as an iPod)
Such digital advances do not solely impact television viewers. Due to the increased use of this commercial-skipping technology, advertisers have had to find new ways beyond the traditional thirty-second commercial to get their messages out. Strategic product placement has been a welcome replacement. A market research firm found that the value of television product placement jumped 46.4% to $1.87 billion in 2004, and predicted (correctly) that the trend will likely continue due to the “growing use of [DVRs] and larger placement deals as marketers move from traditional advertising to alternative media.3 3 See Johannes, TV Placements Overtake Film, supra note 15 (quoting a marketing association president as saying “product placement is the biggest thing to hit the advertising industry in years,” and noting that PQ Media predicts the value of product placement will grow at a compound rate of 14.9% to reach $6.94 billion by 2009).
Although product placement has been around in some form for years, the new focus on merchandising is via digital product placement or replacement. Digital product placement occurs when advertisers insert images of products into video files after they have already been created. For example, such technology has been used for years to superimpose a yellow first-down line into football broadcasts or to insert product logos behind home plate during televised baseball games.4 4 See Wayne Friedman, Virtual Placement Gets Second Chance, ADVERTISING AGE, Feb. 14, 2005, at 67 (discussing efforts to incorporate digital product placement into television).
Within the digital video space, internet based video has continued to become a rapidly growing source of published content. The publishing sources include movies and TV programs, and are often streamed or downloaded over a network as digital data. Accordingly, on-line videos of the type available on services such as YouTube® have become a source of live music, comedy, education and sports programming. These videos are usually sent digitally to a viewer's computer, an “intelligent” TV, or a mobile computing device.
As online video viewing has become very prominent on the global Internet, the need to advertise in this medium has also gained popularity. Promotional content delivery methods offered with and around transmitted Internet videos is widely sought by numerous progressive advertisers—both to supplement and complement traditional advertising on television, radio and print media. Such advertisers are constantly seeking advertising that is targeted based on viewer's demographic, purchase behavior, attitudinal and associated data. Accordingly, some advertisers prefer to understand the context of online videos in order to improve advertising content relevance. Some examples of reasons to perform detailed scene-by-scene video content analysis include:
a) To subtly place products in the background of video scenes for viewers to notice, one would need to know the detailed scene content layout for appropriate product location placement. As an example, if a brand wished to advertise prior to a user requested video being shown the viewer (popularly known in the industry as Pre-Roll ads), or as a banner advert at the bottom of the video frame while the video is being played, it is important for the company to know if any competing products are part of existing video scenes to minimize conflicting messages to a viewer.b) If a company is running Pre-Roll ads it may also wish to place a branded promotional item on a table in the appropriate scenes of videos to increase advertising impact. One may also prefer to place an item as part of the background content if the advertiser prefers a more passive product placement location. To avoid impacting the video scene contextually, the system must account for identifiable items that comprise the scene, and decide if it is appropriate for product placement.